Format: ORAL

Catherine A. Walsh,Marjorie R. Lundgren*

Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

Climate change is placing immense pressure on agricultural systems to ensure sufficient production for an ever-growing global population. Producers must not only increase yields to satisfy these demands, but also safeguard crop nutrition to prevent deficiency-induced diseases and consequent malnourishment. Some crop species experience nutritive decline under ambient atmospheric CO2concentrations in comparison to crops grown historically when atmospheric CO2levels were much lower. Of course, elevated CO2does not occur in isolation and the problem isfurther exasperated by other environmental factors such as high temperatures or drought. The extent of nutritional demise,however, may be determined by the mode of photosynthesis employed by the crop. Currently, the only commercial food crop to use the rare C2type of photosynthesis is wild rocket (Diplotaxis tenuifolia), a nutritionally dense salad crop with rich potential to provide both high nutrients and yield under climate change. Unlike C3 species, plants using C2photosynthesis divide the photorespiratory pathway across mesophyll and bundle sheath cells, which functions to effectively concentrate and reassimilate carbon released from photorespiration to ultimately improve photosynthetic efficiency under warm and dry conditions. However, how C2physiology influences leaf nutrients remains unknown. Here we present the first study of intraspecific diversity for C2photosynthesis across 15 cultivars of wild rocket. We investigate how mineral and phytonutrient profiles change across a range of growth temperatures and in response to elevated CO2concentration across these C2wild rocket cultivars as compared to closely related C3salad greens. Our results suggest that wild rocket will retain nutrients better than related C3salad crops under climate change. This work has significant commercial application for current and future agricultural systems.